Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will sign a deal Friday to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s office said Thursday.

Russia and Ukraine are both major global wheat suppliers, but Moscow’s February 24 invasion of its neighbor has sent food prices soaring and stoked an international food crisis. The war has stalled Kyiv’s exports, leaving dozens of ships stranded and some 20 million tons of grain stuck in silos at Odesa port.

Ankara said a general agreement was reached on a U.N.-led plan during talks in Istanbul last week and that it would now be put in writing by the parties. Details of the agreement were not immediately known. It is due to be signed Friday at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 1330 GMT, Erdogan’s office said.

Before last week’s talks, diplomats said details of the plan included Ukrainian vessels guiding grain ships in and out through mined port waters; Russia agreeing to a truce while shipments move; and Turkey – supported by the United Nations – inspecting ships to allay Russian fears of weapons smuggling.

The United Nations and Turkey have been working for two months to broker what Guterres called a “package” deal – to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports and facilitate Russian grain and fertilizer shipments.

Ukraine could potentially quickly restart exports, Ukraine’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskiy said earlier Thursday.

“The majority of the infrastructure of ports of wider Odesa – there are three of them – remains, so it is a question of several weeks in the event there are proper security guarantees,” he told Ukrainian television.

Moscow has denied responsibility for worsening the food crisis, blaming instead a chilling effect from Western sanctions for slowing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for mining its Black Sea ports.

A day after the Istanbul talks last week, the United States sought to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports by reassuring banks, shipping and insurance companies that such transactions would not breach Washington’s sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
…

The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount, joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation. 

The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the cost of easing prices for people spending more on food, fuel and everything in between. 

The ECB’s surprise hike of half a percentage point for the 19 countries using the euro currency is expected to be followed by another increase in September, possibly of another half-point. Bank President Christine Lagarde had indicated a quarter-point hike last month, when inflation hit a record 8.6%. 

She said the bigger hike was unanimous as “inflation continues to be undesirably high and is expected to remain above our target for some time.” As the bank leaves an era of negative interest rates, Lagarde said economic forecasts don’t point to a recession this year or next but she acknowledged the uncertainty ahead. 

“Economic activity is slowing. Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine is an ongoing drag on growth,” the ECB chief said at a news conference. Higher inflation, supply constraints and uncertainty “are significantly clouding the outlook for the second half of 2022 and beyond.” 

The ECB is coming late to its rate liftoff — a token of inflation that turned out to be higher and more stubborn than first expected and of the shakier state of an economy heavily exposed to the war in Ukraine and a dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Recession predictions have increased for later this year and next year as soaring bills for electricity, fuel and gas deal a blow to businesses and people’s spending power. 

The ECB made the bigger-than-expected increase to underline its determination to get inflation under control after its late start, said Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING bank. The move aims “to restore the ECB’s damaged reputation and credibility as an inflation fighter.” 

“Today’s decision shows that the ECB is more concerned about this credibility than about being predictable,” Brzeski said. 

Recession concerns have helped push the euro to a 20-year low against the dollar, which adds to the ECB’s task by worsening energy prices that are driving inflation. That is because oil is priced in dollars. 

Raising rates is seen as the standard cure for excessive inflation. The ECB’s benchmarks affect how much it costs banks to borrow — and so help determine what they charge to lend. 

But by making credit harder to get, rate increases can slow economic growth, a major conundrum for the ECB as well as for the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates by an outsized three-quarters of a point in June and could do so again at its next meeting. The Bank of England started the march higher in December, and even Switzerland’s central bank surprised with its first increase in nearly 15 years last month. 

The goal for all central banks is to get inflation back down to acceptable levels — for the ECB, it’s 2% annually — without tipping the economy into recession. It’s difficult to get right as central banks reverse what has been a decade of very low rates and inflation. 

“The most precious good that we can deliver and that we have to deliver is price stability. So we have to bring inflation down to 2% in the medium term. That is the imperative,” Lagarde said. “And it’s time to deliver.” 

Yet the European economy has the added worry of a potential cutoff of Russian natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, heat homes and fuel energy-intensive industries such as steel, glassmaking and agriculture. Even without a total cutoff, Russia has steadily dialed back gas flows, with EU leaders accusing the Kremlin of using gas to pressure countries over sanctions and support for Ukraine. 

Rising interest rates follow the end of the bank’s 1.7 trillion-euro (dollar) stimulus program that helped keep longer-term borrowing costs low for governments and companies as they weathered the pandemic recession. 

Those bond-market borrowing rates are now rising again, especially for more indebted eurozone countries such as Italy, where Premier Mario Draghi’s resignation has brought back bad memories of Europe’s debt crisis a decade ago. Markets fear the exit of the former ECB president, who has pushed policies meant to keep debt manageable and boost growth in Europe’s third-largest economy, could raise the risk of another eurozone crisis. 

The bank approved a new financial backstop that is part of its arsenal to prevent that from happening again. The ECB would step into markets to buy the bonds of countries facing excessive and unjustified borrowing rates. But it wouldn’t offer protection if the ECB determines higher borrowing costs resulted from poor government decisions. 

Buying bonds drives their price up and their yield down, because price and yield move in opposite directions, thus capping interest costs. Spiraling bond-market rates threatened to break up the euro in 2010-2012 and led Greece and countries to turn to other members and the International Monetary Fund for bailouts. 

This problem is unique to the ECB because it oversees 19 countries that are in different financial shape. The backstop aims to “safeguard the smooth transmission of our monetary policy stance throughout the euro area,” Lagarde said. 

The ECB’s lowest rate, the deposit rate on money left overnight by banks, was raised from minus 0.5% to zero. 

 
…

Ukraine reported Russian shelling Thursday on the city of Kharkiv killed at least two people and wounded 19 others.

Regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the dead included one child, and that four people were in serious condition.

Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that Russian forces were continuing small-scale assaults along the front line in the Donbas region, the part of eastern Ukraine that has been a focus of its war.

The ministry said in its daily assessment that Russia was likely closing in on the Vuhlehirska power plant, northeast of Donetsk, and that Russian forces were prioritizing capturing critical infrastructure sites.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow wants to capture territory in southern Ukraine beyond the Donbas region.

Russia failed in early stages of its five-month offensive to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv, in northern Ukraine.

But Lavrov said in an interview Wednesday with state media that Russia no longer feels constrained to fighting in the Donbas where Russian separatists have been battling Kyiv’s forces since 2014, when Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

“Now, the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk. It’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and several other territories. This process is continuing, consistently and persistently,” Lavrov told the state news RT television and RIA Novosti news agency.

Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, said Moscow’s territorial objectives would expand still further if Western countries delivered more long-range missiles to Kyiv.

The U.S. announced Wednesday plans to send four more such rocket systems to Ukraine, along with more artillery rounds.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States, and other systems from our allies and partners,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Ukraine’s defenders are pushing hard to hold Russia’s advances in the Donbas.”

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainians have been using U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers to hit Russian command centers and supply lines, including a strategically important bridge across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region.

Russian officials said the bridge has sustained damage but is still open to some traffic. The Russian military would be hard-pressed to keep supplying its forces in the region if the bridge were destroyed.

“The Ukrainians are making the Russians pay for every inch of territory that they gain,” Milley said, and the Donbas is “not lost yet. The Ukrainians intend to continue the fight.”

The future, Milley said, will depend on the number of long-range rockets and ammunition the Ukrainians have.

“We have a very serious grinding war of attrition going on in the Donbas. And unless there’s a breakthrough on either side — which right now the analysts don’t think is particularly likely in the near term — it will probably continue as a grinding war of attrition for a period of time until both sides see an alternative way out of this, perhaps through negotiation or something like that.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia is “laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

Kirby said the areas involved in plans that Russia is reviewing include Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned Thursday after failing in his efforts to unite the fractious pieces of his unity government.

President Sergio Mattarella’s office said in a statement the president had accepted Draghi’s resignation but asked him to stay on in a caretaker role.

The development could mean Italy heads to a parliamentary election in the coming months instead of the scheduled vote set to take place next year.

Draghi became prime minister in 2021 as Italy dealt with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and a sagging economy.

Mattarella rejected his earlier offer of resignation last week, urging Draghi to appeal to lawmakers to keep the ruling coalition together.

But several key parties boycotted a confidence vote, prompting Draghi to submit his resignation again.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

Russia resumed the flow of natural gas through the Nord Stream pipeline to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day interruption for maintenance.

Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s energy regulator, tweeted that gas flows had reached 40% of capacity, the same level as before the shutdown.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom blamed the reduction on the absence of a gas turbine being repaired in Canada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Gazprom would meet its delivery obligations, while warning that work on another turbine later this month could bring more reductions.

European Union leaders have warned of the potential for Russia to cut off supplies in response to Western pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The EU has asked member countries to voluntarily reduce their use of gas, both to seek alternative options and to save existing supplies for winter months.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

As Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska reminded the U.S. Congress of the human costs of Russia’s invasion of her country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow’s military aims were no longer confined only to the east of the country. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have succumbed to his own mythmaking and hyperbole, unable to let go of his desire to conquer Ukraine, no matter what the costs, according to a public assessment by America’s top spymaster.

CIA Director William Burns, the last U.S. official to meet with Putin before he ordered Russian forces into Ukraine in February, warned late Wednesday that the Russian leader truly believes he must conquer Ukraine to fulfill his destiny.

“Putin really does believe his rhetoric, and I’ve heard him say it privately over the years, that Ukraine’s not a real country. … He really thought he could take Kyiv in less than a week,” Burns told an audience at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

“He is convinced that his destiny as Russia’s leader is to restore Russia as a great power … and he does not believe you can do that without controlling Ukraine and its choices,” Burns added. “He believes it’s his entitlement, it’s Russia’s entitlement to dominate Ukraine.”

Previous U.S, intelligence assessments have suggested that while Putin had no intention of forsaking his effort to conquer all of Ukraine, it was possible he might be willing to officially pause the fighting to give his forces time to reorganize following substantial losses since the invasion began.

“It is entirely plausible, from our perspective, that depending on how things develop over the coming months and so on that he [Putin] is convinced that there is value in effect, coming to some sort of agreement,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month.

U.S. intelligence estimates say approximately 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine, with another 45,000 wounded.

Ukrainian defense officials put the number of Russian soldiers killed at about 38,000.

Burns seemed to cast doubt on the idea a deal of some sort could be in play, describing it as inconsistent with Putin’s world view.

Putin is “a big believer in control and intimidation and getting even,” Burns said, calling the Russian leader “an apostle of payback.”

“As his grip on power has tightened, as his circle of advisers has narrowed, his own personal sense of destiny and his appetite for risk has grown,” Burns said. “Putin’s bet … is that he can succeed in a grinding war of attrition, that they can wear down the Ukrainian military, that winter’s coming and so he can strangle the Ukrainian economy, he can wear down European publics and leadership, and he can wear down the United States.”

“My own strong view is that Putin was wrong in his assumptions about breaking the [NATO] alliance and breaking Ukrainian will before the war began and I think he’s just as wrong now,” Burns said.

There are some indications that Russia has learned lessons from its early failures in Ukraine, limiting its objectives to those in the Donbas region and by increasing its use of long-range artillery, an area in which Moscow maintains an advantage over Kyiv.

At the same time, however, there are signs Putin’s ambitions are reemerging.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday warned that Russian forces could soon expand their “special operation” due to the provision of U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine.

“Now the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk, it’s Kherson, Zaporizhia, and several other territories,” Lavrov told state-run media Wednesday.

“We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that will be controlled by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, or whoever replaces him, to contain weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of the republics that have declared independence, those that want to determine their own future.”

Two hundred Ukrainian troops have been trained on the HIMARS and at least eight units have seen action so far, according to U.S. military officials, targeting and destroying Russian weapon depots and command-and-control centers.

U.S. defense officials have said four more HIMARS are being sent to the Ukrainian military and promised the delivery of yet another four systems in a security package set to be announced later this week.

“We’re not working just to provide security assistance in the short term,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. “[We’re] also looking ahead to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that it will need for deterrence and defense over the longer term.”

Other Ukrainian allies also see the war grinding on.

“We don’t see any signs that the war will end soon,” NATO Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security David Cattler told an online forum Tuesday.

“In fact, there are even more signs that this war will be a very long one,” he said.

Russia and Iran

U.S. defense and intelligence officials are warning Iran not to get involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A day after Putin met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon it would be a “really, really bad idea” for Iran to provide Russia with armed drones.

“On the issue of Iranian support to Russia, we would advise Iran to not do that,” Austin said.

Asked about Austin’s comments, Burns called Austin, “very good at understatement.”

“The reality is Russians and Iranians need each other right now, both heavily sanctioned countries, both looking to break out of political isolation,” Burns added.  “But I think as troubling as some of the steps between those two parties are, and we focus on them very sharply at CIA, there are limits I think, to the ways in which they’re going to be able to help one another right now.”

Lessons for China

Burns said Moscow is getting some help from China, with Beijing stepping up purchases of energy products to help support the Russian economy. But he cautioned the Chinese have been very cautious about lending Russia any military support.

“It seems to me that President Xi [Jinping] and the Chinese leadership has been unsettled to some extent, especially in the first phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine … unsettled by the military performance of the Russians early on and the performance of Russian weaponry, unsettled by the economic uncertainties that the war has unleashed,” he said.

However, Burns said Russia’s struggles are unlikely to change China’s calculus about using force to take Taiwan.

“Our sense is that it probably affects less the question of whether the Chinese leadership might choose some years down the road to use force to control Taiwan but how and when they will do it,” he said.

“If there’s one lesson I think they may be drawing from Putin’s experience in Ukraine, is you don’t achieve quick decisive victories with underwhelming force,” Burns said.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum earlier Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the United States played down the likelihood Beijing would use force against Taiwan.

“The last thing we wish to do is to fight with our compatriots [in Taiwan],” Ambassador Qin Gang said, accusing the U.S. of sending sophisticated weapons to support the Taiwanese military.

“We will try our best in our great sincerity to achieve the peaceful reunification,” Qin added. “The ‘One China’ principle is the political foundation for China-U.S. relations, and is the bedrock for the peace and stability across Taiwan Strait …  but we urge the United States to honor its commitments with actions.”

 
…

When Russian missiles struck a mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk last month, the deadly attack sent ripples of disinformation across Europe.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the mall was “permanently closed” at the time of the strike and that its forces were targeting ammunition stores. Russia’s ambassador to Ireland responded to international criticism over Moscow’s targeting of a civilian area, describing claims about the attack as “yet another disinformation stunt.”

In the Hungarian capital, Budapest, Blanka Zoldi, editor-in-chief of the fact-checking site Lakmusz, watched as those and other false claims crossed her country’s borders.

“In Hungary, pro-government social media influencers and prominent journalists started to publish screenshots of the opening hours of the shopping mall, claiming that Google Maps actually showed that the shopping mall was not even open and that it has been permanently closed for a long time,” Zoldi told VOA.

“This was the story that was emerging in Hungary, but we saw the exact screenshots of Google Maps appearing in many other countries,” she said.

The quick spread of such disinformation related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to fact-checkers combining forces globally.

“When the war began, fact-checkers immediately started seeing misinformation about the Russia-Ukraine conflict spreading to other countries,” said Enock Nyariki, the community and impact manager at the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Founded in 2015, the IFCN is an initiative of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies that connects fact-checkers and journalists around the world.

“We saw that misinformation [about the Ukraine conflict] was now going viral in local languages,” Nyariki said. “Ukrainian fact-checkers could not cope with the new situation. It was difficult even for them to spot every piece.”

Maldita, a fact-checking organization based in Spain, was one of the first to alert the IFCN about the fast-spreading disinformation in Europe about the war, Nyariki said.

That led IFCN members to form a collaborative database named #UkraineFacts, where fact-checkers share information, flag mis- and disinformation, and produce content debunking false claims related to the conflict in Ukraine.

The website publishes content in English and other languages from IFCN’s 100-plus members. It has already produced more than 2,000 fact-checks about the war in Ukraine.

Maldita, which sparked the idea, last month accepted the Anne Jacobsen’s Memorial Award in Norway on behalf of the network for its work.

In honoring the initiative, the awards committee said in a statement that #UkraineFacts “has shown how we can cooperate instead of working on solving the same problem in different places or media organizations.”

US election, pandemic prompt fact-checking need

The emergence of fact-checking as a popular tool in investigative journalism largely came during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and later the coronavirus pandemic, both of which resulted in an increase in misinformation, said Nyariki.

But the spread of false information related to the Ukraine conflict has accelerated collaboration efforts.

Zoldi of Lakmusz said that in many cases, false narratives are similar in different countries.

Citing the disinformation around the mall attack, Zoldi said Lakmusz journalists relied on other fact-checking organizations to debunk the claims, including the BBC.

“The BBC is a trustworthy organization that has war reporters who spoke to eyewitnesses who confirmed that there were people and civilians in the shopping mall,” Zoldi said.

Lakmusz is a relatively new website. Co-funded by the European Union and Agence France-Presse (AFP), the site was founded in January as part of a collaboration between AFP, the Hungarian news site 444.hu, and the Media Universalis Foundation, which is linked to Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest.

Its goal: to fight misinformation in Hungary.

A shrinking space for independent journalism and lack of media pluralism in the EU member state has been flagged by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and media advocates.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government have denied taking action to dismantle the independent press, Reuters reports.

Lakmusz relies on a team of journalists and researchers including Ferenc Hammer, head of the Lorand Eotvos University’s department of media and communication.

While the journalists work on the content, researchers like Hammer help to ensure accuracy.

“Our job is basically desktop research, comparing cases and following up with fact-checks that the website publishes,” Hammer told VOA.

The initiative not only checks for potential disinformation, but it also investigates how people in Hungary respond to false narratives.

“We follow the patterns of every piece of fact-checking and see how readers interact with them on social media. It can be very instructive for the fact-checkers to see how their work reaches the audience,” Hammer said.

They may be one of the newer fact-check initiatives, but Lakmusz’s team already plans to expand its work through collaborating with others and applying for membership in the IFCN.

“It’s very important because it would give us access to look at how other fact-checking organizations are working in different countries,” Zoldi said. “So, being a member of that network would give us a good overview of other fact-checkers that work according to IFCN’s standards.”

Those standards include being at least six months old as a fact-checking organization of issues of public interest, showing transparency about funding and being politically nonpartisan, Nyariki said.

“Fact-checkers don’t compete,” he said. “They cooperate and collaborate. We see each other as partners who are trying to fight one global enemy: misinformation.”
…

For weeks Natalya Zadoyanova had lost contact with her younger brother Dmitriy, who was trapped in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

Russian forces had bombed the orphanage where he worked, and he was huddling with dozens of others in the freezing basement of a building without doors and windows. When she next heard from him, he was in tears.

“I’m alive,” he told her. “I’m in Russia.”

Zadoyanov was facing the next chapter of devastation for the people of Mariupol and other occupied cities: forcible transfers to Russia, the nation that killed their neighbors and shelled their hometowns almost into oblivion.

Nearly 2 million Ukrainian refugees have been sent to Russia, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these transfers as forced journeys to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations.

An Associated Press investigation has found that while the picture is more nuanced than the Ukrainian government suggests, many refugees are indeed forced into Russia, subjected to abuse, stripped of documents and unclear about their futures — or even locations.

It starts with a choice: Die in Ukraine or live in Russia. They are taken through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being pulled aside and never seen again. Refugees described an old woman who died of the cold, her body swollen, and an evacuee beaten so severely that her back was covered in bruises.

Those who “pass” the filtrations are invited to stay and often promised a payment of about 10,000 rubles ($170) that they may or may not get. Sometimes their Ukrainian passports are taken away, and the chance of Russian citizenship is offered instead. Sometimes, they are pressured to sign documents incriminating the Ukrainian government and military.

Those with no money or contacts in Russia — the majority, by most accounts — can only go where they are sent. The AP verified that Ukrainians have received temporary accommodation in more than two dozen Russian cities and localities.

However, the AP investigation also found signs of dissent within Russia to the government narrative that Ukrainians are being rescued from Nazis. Almost all the refugees the AP interviewed spoke gratefully about Russians who quietly helped them through a clandestine network, retrieving documents, finding shelter, buying train and bus fare, exchanging Ukrainian hryvnia for Russian rubles and even lugging the makeshift baggage that holds the remains of their pre-war lives.

The investigation is the most extensive to date on the transfers, based on interviews with 36 Ukrainians mostly from Mariupol who left for Russia, including 11 still there and others in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Ireland, Germany and Norway. The AP also drew on interviews with Russian underground volunteers, video footage, Russian legal documents and Russian state media.

Exhausted and hungry in the basement in Mariupol, Zadoyanov finally accepted the idea of evacuation. The buses went only to Russia.

Along the way, Russian authorities searched his phone and interrogated him. Zadoyanov was asked what it meant to be baptized, and whether he had sexual feelings toward a boy in the camp.

He and the others were taken to the train station and told their destination would be Nizhny Novgorod, 1,300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. From the train, Zadoyanov called Natalya in Poland. Her panic rose.

Get off the train, she said. Now.

The transfer of hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine is part of a deliberate, systemic strategy, as laid out in government documents.

Some Ukrainians stay in Russia because while they may be technically free to leave, they have nowhere to go, no money, no documents or no way to cross the distances in a sprawling country twice the size of the United States. Others may have family and strong ties in Russia or prefer to start anew in a country where they at least speak the language. And some wrongly fear that if they return, Ukraine will prosecute them for going to the enemy.

Lyudmila Bolbad’s family walked out of Mariupol and ended up taking the nine-day train trip to the city of Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border and nearly 10,000 kilometers from Ukraine.

Bolbad and her husband found work in a factory. Little else has gone as they’d hoped.

They handed over their Ukrainian passports in exchange for promises of Russian citizenship, only to discover that landlords will not rent to Ukrainians without a valid identity document. The promised payments are slow to come, and they have been stranded with hundreds of others from Mariupol in a rundown hotel with barely edible food. But if she returns, Bolbad thinks Ukraine would see her as a traitor, and she plans to stay in Russia.

“We’re trying to return to a normal life somehow, to encourage ourselves to start our life from scratch,” she said.

For Ukrainians trying to escape, help often comes from an unexpected source: Russians.

On a recent day in Estonia, a Russian tattoo artist accompanied a family from Mariupol across the border to a shelter.

The tattoo artist, who asked that his name be withheld because he still lives in Russia, was the last in a chain of volunteers that stretched 1,900 kilometers from Taganrog and Rostov to Narva, the Estonian border town. He boards in St. Petersburg a couple of times a week, going to Finland and sometimes Estonia.

He said Russians who help know each other only through Telegram, nearly all keeping anonymous “because everyone is afraid of some kind of persecution.”

“I can’t stop it,” he said of the war and the deportation of Ukrainians to Russia. “This is what I can do.”

In May, volunteers in Penza in Russia shut down their efforts to help Ukrainian refugees because of anonymous threats. The threats included slashed tires, the Russian symbol Z painted in white on a windshield and graffiti on doors and gates calling them the likes of “Ukro-Nazi” helpers.

For Zadoyanov and many others, the lifeline out of Russia was Russians.

Zadoyanov got off the train to Nizhny Novgorod with the other Ukrainians, and church contacts there gave them shelter and the first steps in finding a way out of Russia into Georgia.

“He was so emotionally damaged,” said his sister, Natalya. “Everyone was.”
…

Britain drew closer to selecting a new prime minister Wednesday after Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak were chosen as finalists by Conservative party lawmakers. Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt finished out of the running in third place in the voting to replace Boris Johnson.

Both Truss and Sunak have played key roles in public office in recent years. Truss has guided Britain’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while Sunak helped lead Britain’s economy during much of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of them will replace Johnson as prime minister come September 5, after he was forced to resign amid several scandals that undermined his leadership of the country.

Johnson gave notice of his resignation in early July after his party decided the scandals had adversely affected his ability to lead the country.

Johnson appeared in his final parliamentary meeting Wednesday and received a round of applause from Parliament members following his exit.

After three years in charge, Johnson answered his final round of “Prime Minister’s Questions,” which is a weekly question-and-answer session between members of Parliament and the prime minister. Johnson’s opponents throughout the session used their questions to grill him on current policies, ranging from soaring living costs to the unfinished Brexit process.

However, Johnson still highlighted some of his successes throughout his leadership.

“I want to use the last few seconds … to give some words of advice to my successor, whoever he or she may be. Number one: Stay close to the Americans. Stick up for the Ukrainians. Stick up for freedom, for democracy everywhere.”

Despite the number of Parliament members who resigned over Johnson’s leadership, the prime minister left with a round of applause from most members.

His final words rang through the building as he said, “We’ve helped, I’ve helped, get this country through a pandemic, and help save another country from barbarism. And frankly, that’s enough to be going on with. Mission largely accomplished,” Johnson said.

“I want to thank everybody here, and hasta la vista, baby.”
…

A new study shines a light on the health risks, challenges, and barriers faced daily by millions of refugees and migrants who suffer from poor health because they lack access to the health care available to others in their host countries.

The World Health Organization has just published its first world report on the health of refugees and migrants. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it a landmark report and an alarm bell.

He said the report reveals the wide disparities between the health of refugees and migrants and the wider populations in their host countries.  

“For example, many migrant workers are engaged in the so-called 3-D jobs—dirty, dangerous, and demanding—without adequate social and health protection or sufficient occupational health measures,” he said. “Refugees and migrants are virtually absent from global surveys and health data, making these vulnerable groups almost invisible in the design of health systems and services.”   

Tedros noted that one billion people or one in every eight people on Earth is a refugee or migrant. He said the numbers were growing. Tedros added that more and more people will be on the move in response to burgeoning conflicts, climate change, rising inequality, and global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the health needs of refugees and migrants often are neglected or unaddressed in the countries they pass through or settle in.

“They face multiple barriers, including out of pocket costs, discrimination and fear of detention and deportation,” Tedros said. “Many countries do have health policies that include health services for refugees and migrants. But too many are either ineffective or are yet to be implemented effectively.”

Waheed Arian, an Afghan refugee and a medical doctor in Britain, recalls the conditions under which he and his family lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan during the late 1980s. He said they were exposed to many diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis. 

“The conditions that we see in refugee camps now in various parts of the world – they are not too dissimilar to the conditions that I experienced firsthand,” he said. “Although we were safe from bombs, we were not physically safe. We were not socially safe, and we were not mentally safe.”   

WHO chief Tedros is calling on governments and organizations that work with refugees and migrants to come together to protect and promote the health of people on the move. He said the report sets forth strategies for achieving more equitable, inclusive health systems that prioritize the well-being of all people.
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The European Union is preparing for the possibility that Russia will stop delivering natural gas needed by many member states to heat homes, generate electricity and power factories.

In a statement Wednesday, the EU Commission asked countries to voluntary reduce their consumption and to grant the EU the power to impose reductions in case of emergency.

The goal is to reduce demand by 15% from August to the end of March.

“Russia is blackmailing us. Russia is using energy as a weapon. And therefore, in any event, whether it’s a partial, major cutoff of Russian gas or total cutoff of Russian gas, Europe needs to be ready,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. 

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, EU countries have stopped importing Russian coal and most Russian oil. The bloc has sought to find other sources of gas, while also ramping up plans to rely more on alternative energy sources to move away from reliance on Russian supplies.

But those efforts are not expected to keep up with energy demand once winter arrives.

The EU Commission statement urged people to save energy now, saying using other fuels will make more gas available in the winter.

“Acting now will reduce the negative GDP impact, by avoiding unplanned actions in a crisis situation later. Early steps also spread out the efforts over time, ease market concerns and price volatility, and allow for a better design of targeted, cost-effective measures protecting industry,” the statement read.

EU members are set to consider the requests at a meeting next Tuesday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia was ready to facilitate Ukrainian grain shipments from ports along the Black Sea, but that he wants Western countries to lift their sanctions against Russian grain exports. 

Putin spoke in Iran after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about a proposed plan to resume the Ukrainian exports. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted Ukrainian trade, and with pressures on the global food supply, the United Nations has been involved in the talks to unblock the shipments. 

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters Tuesday that Guterres remained optimistic that a deal can be completed. He added that Guterres had discussed the ongoing negotiations in a phone call Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

Putin also met Tuesday with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, signaling closer links between the two countries. 

“The contact with Khamenei is very important,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, told reporters in Moscow. “A trusting dialogue has developed between them on the most important issues on the bilateral and international agenda.” 

“On most issues, our positions are close or identical,” Ushakov said. 

As Moscow faces ongoing Western economic sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to strengthen strategic ties with Iran, China and India. 

Iran, also facing Western economic sanctions and ongoing disputes with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program, expressed hope for closer ties with Russia. 

“Both our countries have good experience in countering terrorism, and this has provided much security to our region,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said after meeting with Putin. “I hope your visit to Iran will increase cooperation between our two independent countries.” 

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that intelligence indicated Russia is “laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.” 

Kirby said the areas involved in plans that Russia is reviewing include Kherson, Zaporizhia, and all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. 

He also urged the U.S. Congress to ratify the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, saying the Biden administration wants to see the two countries “brought into the alliance as soon as possible.” 

Both Sweden and Finland broke with longstanding non-alliance positions to seek NATO membership as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations gave its approval Tuesday, setting the stage for a vote in the full Senate. 

All of NATO’s 30 member states must approve Finland and Sweden joining the military alliance. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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U.S. lawmakers are set to hear Wednesday from Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska as she delivers remarks on Capitol Hill. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of the address that Zelenska would be speaking on behalf of all Ukrainian mothers and women. 

“And I really believe that it will be heard by those on whom decision-making in the U.S. depends,” the president said. 

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi encouraged all members of the House and Senate to attend, saying it would be an “important and timely opportunity to hear directly from First Lady Zelenska, to learn more about the terrible toll of the Russian invasion and to express our gratitude to the people of Ukraine for their fight for Democracy.” 

Zelenska met with U.S. first lady Jill Biden at the White House on Tuesday. 

The two last saw each other during Biden’s unannounced visit to western Ukraine in May when they visited a school and joined children who were making Mother’s Day gifts. 

President Joe Biden presented the Ukrainian first lady with a bouquet of flowers — yellow sunflowers, blue hydrangeas and white orchids — the colors of Ukraine’s flag. 

The White House said Zelenska is visiting Washington “to highlight the human cost of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. They will discuss the United States’ continued support for the government of Ukraine and its people as they defend their democracy and cope with the significant human impacts of Russia’s war, which will be felt for years to come.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters
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The United States on Tuesday placed Russia on lists of countries engaged in a “policy or pattern” of human trafficking and forced labor or whose security forces or government-backed armed groups recruit or use child soldiers.

The U.S. State Department included the lists in its annual human trafficking report, which for the first time featured under a 2019 congressional mandate a “State-Sponsored Trafficking in Persons” section.

Russia appeared frequently throughout the report because of its February 24 invasion of Ukraine and what the document called the vulnerability to trafficking of millions of Ukrainian refugees in countries to which they have fled.

“Millions of Ukrainians have had to flee their homes … some leaving the country altogether, most with just what they were able to carry,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a ceremony as he presented the report. “That makes them highly vulnerable to exploitation.”

The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the report’s allegations.

Blinken said that currently there are nearly 25 million trafficking victims worldwide.

In addition to Russia, the new state-sponsors section listed Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and five other countries with a “documented ‘policy or pattern’ of human trafficking,” forced labor in government-affiliated sectors, sexual slavery in government camps or that employ or recruit child soldiers.

The report contained a separate list of 12 countries that employ or recruit child soldiers that included Russia and a number of those included in the new state-sponsors section.

It did not elaborate on why each government was included. But the report’s individual country chapters detailed the scale of trafficking in each and how they are addressing it, with the report ranking each nation’s efforts according to four tiers.

Moscow, the Russia chapter said, was “actively complicit in the forced labor” of North Korean migrant workers, including by issuing visas to thousands in an apparent bid to circumvent United Nations resolutions demanding their repatriation.

It also cited reports that after seizing parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in 2014, Russian-led separatists used children to man checkpoints and serve as fighters and in other posts.

Following this year’s “full-scale invasion,” “media highlighted new uncorroborated reports of Russian forces using children as human shields,” it said.

It cited reports that Russian-led forces have forced thousands of Ukrainians, including children, through “filtration camps,” where their documents are seized, they are compelled to take Russian passports and then transported to remote areas of Russia.
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Azerbaijan on Tuesday began the process of returning its people to land recaptured from Armenian separatists in what Baku calls “The Great Return” following a 2020 war over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.

The oil-rich country has vowed to repopulate lands recaptured in the six-week war with its arch-foe and Caucasus neighbor Armenia that killed more than 6,500 people two years ago.

President Ilham Aliyev had for years promised to retake lands lost in the 1990s, and the first returns marked a symbolic moment for Azerbaijan.

An official said almost 60 people moved back to a village they had had to flee in 1993, when ethnic Armenian separatists broke away from Baku, triggering a conflict that claimed around 30,000 lives.

Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis quit the area during the fighting.

“Fifty-eight people returned to the district of Zangilan” recaptured by Baku in October 2020, Vahid Hajiyev, special presidential representative in the region, told reporters.

More than 30,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis fled Zangilan, near the Iranian border, in 1993.

“At this stage, a total of 41 families will return” over the next five days to the newly rebuilt village of Agally in Zangilan, Hajiyev said.

‘Native land’

The government has pledged to provide jobs for the returnees, Hajiyev said. It has already built dozens of houses in Agally equipped with solar batteries, a brand-new school and a kindergarten, he added. “Over the next months the village will be fully repopulated.”

Emotions ran high as repatriates stepped down from buses in Agally’s windswept central square, where a new fountain sparkled under a sweltering sun.

“We are so happy to be back,” one of the returnees, 64-year-old Mina Mirzoyeva, told Agence France-Presse. “This is our homeland, our native land.”

Rahilya Ismayilova, 72, said that back in 1993, she had been forced to ford a river into Iran with her small children, fleeing for her life from the Armenian separatist forces.

“May all the refugees return to their homes, just as we did today,” she said. “I fled my village with my four children, and today, I am back with my big family, with my nine grandchildren.”

Baku has vowed to spend billions of petrodollars on the reconstruction of Nagorno-Karabakh and nearby recaptured areas.

It allocated $1.3 billion in last year’s budget for infrastructure projects such as new roads, bridges and airports in the region.

But a large-scale return of refugees remains a distant prospect given the scale of the devastation and the danger from landmines.

Peace talks

In autumn 2020, Azerbaijan and Armenia went to war for a second time for control of Karabakh. The fighting ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire agreement.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swaths of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

Armen Grigoryan, chair of Armenia’s security council, said Tuesday that Yerevan’s forces would complete their withdrawal from areas that had been under separatist control by September.

This weekend, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, for their first one-on-one talks since the war.

They were expected to build on an agreement which Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reached under European Union mediation in May to “advance discussions” on a future peace treaty.

The two leaders met in Brussels in April and May. European Council President Charles Michel has said their next meeting is scheduled for July or August.

Following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, an increasingly isolated Moscow lost its status as the primary mediator in the conflict.

The EU has since led the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process, which involves peace talks, border delimitation and the reopening of transport links.
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Britain is under a heat warning – reportedly stretching from London in the south to Leeds and Manchester in the north – as the mercury climbs to record levels amid an intense heat wave plaguing Europe.

Some reports say the temperature climbed to 40.2 Celsius (104 F) in Britain on Tuesday, with other media reporting a high of 40.3 C (104.5). The high temperatures break a record of 38.7 C (101.7 F) set in 2019.

Due to the heat, fires are blazing in major cities, including in the London area. Elsewhere, in the West Midlands area, a fire forced the evacuation of more than a dozen people.

Households are turning off their washing machines in an attempt to conserve water for future use.

London has seen fewer people outside and on roads, instead trying to stay cool in the scorching heat. To avoid the sun, many tourist attractions, like the British Museum with a full glass ceiling, and outdoor activities have been canceled or closed early.

Airports have seen damaged runways due to the extreme weather, while Britain’s Network Rail has warned passengers not to travel north of London. The rail system says on its website that buckled rails are reported and overhead wire systems are failing.

Hospitals, the Supreme Court, and other public buildings are feeling the high temperatures. Buildings are either having air conditioning outages or don’t have air conditioning at all.

“Infrastructure, much of it built in Victorian times, just wasn’t built to withstand this type of temperature,” said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

While members of the public have been seeking ways to cool off, authorities are warning people not to swim in open waters, citing fatalities.

Many other countries across Europe are experiencing the same extremes in weather. Cities in Spain and Portugal are feeling the effects of record-breaking temperatures as fires erupt throughout their cities. Over 750 heat-related deaths have been recorded in Spain and Portugal, said the Associated Press.

Climate experts believe the high temperatures are warnings of climate change progressing more quickly, something they say will risk the lives of European citizens for the next 30 years.

A professor of hydrology at the University of Reading, Hannah Cloke, said the record high temperature was a “grim milestone” and a “slide into unknown territory for humanity as we heat our planet,” reported The Guardian newspaper.

Climate experts also believe the extreme temperatures will continue across Europe for years to come.
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The World Meteorological Organization, WMO, warns heatwaves, raging wildfires and record-breaking temperatures are becoming normal because of climate change.

Meteorologists say the scorching heatwave sweeping Europe is likely to last well into the middle of next week, smashing more temperature records as it continues.

They warn the time between heatwaves is becoming shorter, noting the current event was preceded by a similar one in June. And they say the likelihood of a third heatwave occurring before summer ends is strong.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said he has no doubt as to what is behind the phenomenon.

“Thanks to climate change, we have started breaking records nationally and also regionally,” Taalas said. “In the future, these kinds of heatwaves are going to be normal, and we will see even stronger extremes.”

He said people have pumped so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the negative trend will continue for decades. Those who will suffer most, he said, are the elderly and sick. The WMO chief said more frequent, intense heatwaves also will have a major adverse effect on agriculture.

“In the previous heatwaves in Europe, we lost big parts of harvest, and under the current situation we are already having this global food crisis,” Taalas said. “Because of the war in Ukraine, this heatwave is going to have a further negative impact on agricultural activities.”

The World Health Organization’s director of environment and health, Maria Neira, said heat compromises the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature. She warned that will lead to a cascade of illnesses, including heat cramps, heat stroke and hyperthermia.

“We are very much concerned that when this heatwave coincides as well with high levels of pollution in the form that will exacerbate the respiratory, cardiovascular and general diseases and conditions,” Neira said. “And this is a major concern, as well for those big urban spaces where the cities that are not well adapted to cope with these high temperatures.”

Scientists emphasize climate change is happening even faster than drafters of the Paris climate change agreement anticipated. They note warming in many regions already has surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The WMO’s Taalas said the world is heading for 2.5 degrees Celsius warming, which means heatwaves and other extreme weather events will become a normal part of life. He said that should be a wake-up call for human beings.
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A swath of Europe is battling soaring temperatures, wildfires and a severe drought, with a new report predicting the parched conditions will shrink crop yields — including in agricultural heavyweight France — at a time when Russia’s blockade of grain from Ukraine is already hurting consumers.

On Tuesday, youngsters took a water break in Paris, where the temperature sizzled at around 37 degrees Celsius.

But elsewhere in France, there is no reprieve from the heat.

Firefighters in the southwestern Gironde area are battling massive blazes that have decimated thousands of hectares of land and covered the wine city of Bordeaux in a blanket of haze.

A European Union report out this week finds nearly half of EU territory risks drought, with France among half a dozen countries most severely affected. The dry weather is stressing nature and expected to dampen food and energy production — two areas where Europe is already feeling the fallout of the war in Ukraine.

The EU’s executive arm expects grain output across the bloc will be 2.5 percent lower than last year — although they’ll still have an export surplus.

Many are bracing for a bigger hit. Climate scientists predict heatwaves and droughts in Europe will be more frequent and intense.

More immediately, one farmer from the Alpes region told French TV he fears water shortages will trigger an irrigation ban in the coming weeks. If that happens, he says, it will be catastrophic for area harvests.
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A Dutch court sentenced two men to five years in prison Monday after convicting them of attempted murder and arson for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a journalist’s home in a late-night attack last year.

The court said the two men, identified by Dutch media as Tjeerd P. and Jaimy W. in line with privacy guidelines, launched the attack because one objected to what he considered the negative tone of the reporter’s coverage of demonstrations against the Dutch government’s coronavirus lockdown measures.

The court in the northern city of Groningen said the attackers threw a beer bottle filled with kerosene through a window in the front door of the reporter’s home in the early hours of Aug. 19, last year, causing a small fire.

Nobody was injured in the attack, but the reporter, Willem Groeneveld, said in a victim impact statement during the trial that since the attack “he has always been on his guard and feels partly deprived of his journalistic freedom,” the court said.

It added that: “Journalistic freedom is an important pillar of the democratic constitutional state. Journalists have an important role in shaping social discussions and must be able to express themselves freely, without having to fear for their safety.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Tuesday in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where he was due to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discuss an agreement to resume grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Monday there has been incremental progress with the negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations, “but nothing to announce at this stage.” He said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is ready to travel to Istanbul if need be.

Guterres spoke on the phone Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the ongoing negotiations, according to the United Nations.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called Tuesday for a price cap on Russian oil exports while urging countries to unite in opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Yellen said “economic integration has been weaponized by Russia,” adding that Russia has threatened to spark a global food crisis by blocking Ukrainian ports.

“All responsible countries must unite in opposition to this war and work together to end it swiftly,” Yellen said. “And that’s why the United States and other responsible allies and partners are seeking to reduce Russia’s revenue to wage its war without causing a necessary volatility in global energy markets.”

Ukraine’s military said Tuesday Russian attacks continued in multiple parts of the country, including shelling in Sumy, as well as blasts in Mykolaiv and a missile strike in Odesa.

Britain’s defense ministry said Russia “may still make further territorial gains” as it pursues its state goal of taking control of all of Donetsk province in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. But the ministry said in its daily assessment Tuesday that Russia’s “rate of advance is likely to be very slow without a significant operational pause for reorganization and refit” of its forces.

In Washington, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska is due to meet with U.S. first lady Jill Biden at The White House, a day after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

A statement released by the State Department Monday night said “Secretary Blinken commended First Lady Zelenska’s work to help Ukrainians impacted by the war.”

Blinken “reiterated that the United States will continue to provide assistance to help Ukraine respond to the significant economic and humanitarian challenges it faces, including supporting the First Lady’s mental health initiative for citizens affected by the war,” the statement said.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Blinken assured Zelenska of U.S. support of Ukraine and commended the first lady for her work helping civilians traumatized by the war.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska is set to meet with U.S. first lady Jill Biden at the White House on Tuesday. 

The two last met during Biden’s unannounced visit to western Ukraine in May when they visited a school and joined children who were making Mother’s Day gifts. 

Zelenska on Monday met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. 

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Zelenska and Blinken talked about “the immense and growing human costs of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” and that Blinken emphasized the U.S. commitment to supporting Ukraine. 

“Secretary Blinken commended first lady Zelenska’s work to help Ukrainians impacted by the war,” Price said. “He reiterated that the United States will continue to provide assistance to help Ukraine respond to the significant economic and humanitarian challenges it faces, including supporting the first lady’s mental health initiative for citizens affected by the war.” 

Zelenska’s schedule also includes going to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to address lawmakers. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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